


The Stars Upon Thars

by copperbadge



Series: The Midnight Theatre [7]
Category: How the Grinch Stole Christmas! - Dr. Seuss, Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Dr. Seuss - Freeform, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-13
Updated: 2013-12-13
Packaged: 2018-01-04 12:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1080763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/pseuds/copperbadge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers discovers the Grinch, but he already knew Dr. Seuss...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stars Upon Thars

**Anonymous:** You still taking Hydrocodone Theater requests? It occurred to me today that Steve's probably never heard of the Grinch, and that Tony probably references it a lot around Christmas.

Theodore Geisel’s career began with political cartooning, ad graphics, and humorous illustration in 1927. By 1940 he had published several books, including the children's book _Horton Hatches The Egg_ and the semi-pornographic _The Seven Lady Godivas_ , publishers not being as discerning about branding back then. 

Steve definitely owned a copy of _The Seven Lady Godivas_. It wasn't because of the naked ladies, but because of how captivatingly weird they looked. 

As a propagandist for the early war effort, Dr. Seuss met Captain America when Steve was in New York at the height of the bond sales show. When Ted got to be head of a military animation department they met again so that Steve could do the voice for an animated short about Captain America’s War Effort. 

One day, while Steve was recording his lines, Ted snitched his notebook out of his bag and turned to a clean page, drawing a classic Seuss-style Captain America with a puffed out chest and a strange fuzzy topknot to his helmet. 

They got on swimmingly in the short time they had working together; Geisel was passionately anti-fascist and his cartoons about American complacency over Hitler were biting. Steve knew this already -- he'd always read the lefty papers where his work showed up. 

So the first time Steve sat down to watch _How The Grinch Stole Christmas_ with the team, because Clint called Tony a grinch and Thor asked what a grich was, he saw his old pal Dr. Seuss’s name on the title. He felt a stab of familiarity, like a rope thrown to a drowning man, when he saw those feathery, fuzzy, awkward-limbed creatures of Ted Geisel’s imagination cavorting on the screen. And it was totally okay to cry at the end because everyone was crying, even if they were doing it because of the Grinch’s heart and he was doing it over how much he would have liked to have laughed about it with Ted. 

A couple of days later, Natasha gave him a first-printing of _The Sneetches_ for Christmas. It was written after Steve went into the ice, but he knew when he saw it that he'd had an impact on his friend Ted. 

It’s not well known that the very small collectible first edition had a dedication reading _For Steve, Who Never Gave A Toot Over Who Had A Star Upon Thars._

**Author's Note:**

> **kayquimi:**
> 
>  
> 
> Because seriously, who can look at that today and not immediately think of Captain America? (Steve’s given up on trying to point out that it was published well before he even got the serum; there are much worse things he’s had attributed to him, after all.)
> 
>  **copperbadge:** Erskine totally had a copy of this hanging in his office while he was working on the Serum. Tony probably found it pasted into one of Howard’s notebooks when Fury gave him back all his dad’s Top Secret SHIELD Stuff trunks. 
> 
> **clockways:** Based on the wonderfully heartbreaking snippit by copperbadge: 
> 
> (Please check out [the original post](http://clockways.tumblr.com/post/69006698213/based-on-the-wonderfully-heartbreaking-snippit-by) and tell Clock how wonderful that art is!)


End file.
